It’s a sound we all know and love: that beautiful “cha-ching!” that alerts you on your smartphone when you’ve made a sale. But no number of “cha-chings” can make up for a less-than-firm grasp on your business’s financial landscape. We've been chatting with our seller community to find out more about how you use the Seller payment account – and in particular, what data is most useful to your business. We want you to feel even more informed when it comes to your shop’s finances.
That’s why this week, we’re excited to roll out some changes. We’ve reworked how we summarize and present your finances to make it easier for you to understand and use information about your sales, fees, and profit margins. We believe that these tangible changes can help you not just review your sales, but also effectively plan your shop’s future.
Here are the two overarching changes you can expect with these seller payment account updates.
- Straightforward financial summaries: We’ve updated the way we summarise informations – refunds, total sales, and taxes collected – to make understanding your finances easier. Within those summaries, all refunds, credits, processing fees, and sales tax are separated out from each other.
- More financial education moments: We’ve added tooltips and descriptors for all fees, so you can better understand what you’re being charged and why.
Keep reading for a more detailed deep dive into these changes.
New summary groupings
Your Activity summaries are grouped into four sections now: Sales, Fees, Marketing, and if eligible, Delivery (right now, postage labels on Etsy are available to sellers located in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia). It’s important to note that Sales tax/VAT will appear in the respective sections within your summary:
- Depending on buyer and seller locations and local regulations, the Buyer may be charged a Sales tax/VAT on their order that is required to be collected by Etsy and remitted to the local tax authorities. This is paid by the buyer on the order and will show up for sellers in the Sales section of the Payment account under “Sales tax paid by buyer (Remitted)” or “VAT paid by buyer (Remitted)”.
- Depending on local tax laws, some sellers may be subject to a VAT on their seller fees. This is a tax paid by the seller and would be charged in the Fees, Marketing, or Delivery sections. This could be labelled as Sales tax or VAT, GST, or HST, depending on the local regulation and terminology in the market.
Let’s take a closer look at each:
Sales summary
Now you can see your “Total sales”, or the amount that buyers paid for orders from your shop.
Any refunds are now separated out under “Refunds”.
Fees summary
Listing fees, processing fees, and transaction fees are now listed separately. When you get a fee refund or credit, this is called out specifically as “Credits” under each section.
If you receive an Etsy fee debit or credit in the selected time period, this will appear as “Misc. Etsy debits” and “Misc. Etsy credits” under the Fees summary.
Marketing summary
You'll see any relevant marketing charges, like Etsy Ads, Offsite Ads, and Etsy Plus subscription, under Marketing.
Delivery summary
Now, this section will only appear for sellers who are able to purchase Etsy postage labels (that is, sellers located in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia).
New tooltips
Have you ever been perusing your seller payment account and seen a line item that you just don’t understand? We want to remedy that: We’ve added tooltips for nearly all of the new summary items for which sellers may have questions, like Sales tax, VAT, and all fees. These tooltips will explicitly call out pertinent info, like why a fee is charged and how much it costs.
Other changes
Updates to Recent activities
We’ve updated Recent activities line items to be more specific and helpful to you. You will now see a separate line for each activity. For example, sales tax and processing fee are separate lines (no longer lumped into the Sale line).
As excited as we are about these changes, we also know that our work isn’t done. We’re continuing to listen to you and your needs as a seller. And we’re working hard to take what we hear into consideration as we craft the best experience for sellers like you.
Check out your updated payment account or head to the Forums post to read our FAQs.
Etsy staff writers and contributing editors.